Gregorius

Hartmann von Aue, the educated author of major Arthurian romances modeled after French examples, also wrote two legendary verse narratives that both profile and weigh the spiritual and chivalric-courtly ways of life against each other without making a simple decision. In "Gregorius," the story of the "good sinner" is told, who, as a child of incest, unwittingly continues the sin of his parents with his own mother as his wife, atones for it through seventeen years of exemplary hermit life, and is subsequently elected pope. The new edition and translation by Waltraud Fritsch-Rössler offers, for the first time in the Universal Library, a commentary that facilitates and expands understanding.